


Electric Sheep (Do Vocaloids Dream?)

by doomy (jeebie), jeebie



Series: Vocal-Android Anthology [1]
Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Dramedy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Robot!Vocaloids, Slow Burn, Swearing, Trauma, Vocaloids as OCs, headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeebie/pseuds/doomy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeebie/pseuds/jeebie
Summary: [Android/Robot!Vocaloid AU] In the distant future, VOCALOID has gone from being a wildly successful singing synthesizer to being a line of domestic fully-customizable androids.Fighting for elbow room between two big box stores in Chicago’s shady, yet glamorous downtown is one of the most infamous Vocaloid repair shops in the United States. This shop, not-so-fondly dubbed “Chopyard”, has fallen into rough times thanks to the mysterious death of its previous owner and its subsequent passing on to the owner’s daughter.This is the story of The Mechanic, and her futile attempt to outrun fate.
Series: Vocal-Android Anthology [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907989
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> The pandemic has given me a chance to get back into the fandoms I was into in middle school. Hello Vocaloid Fandom! Long time, no see!  
> I put my webcomic on the back burner because I just *had* to put this out, hope you enjoy!

My radio sat on my overcrowded desk, teetering with a corner of the small, plastic unit hanging off of the wood surface. If it were to fall it’s drop wouldn’t be far enough for it to completely break, but if it fell at a certain angle it’d be almost guaranteed that the front panel would pop off again as it had after countless times where I’d just gotten a little too into the music. It was a small gadget in a canary yellow case, with a tiny handle on the top for if I ever had enough time to get away from the shop for more than an hour and I wanted to hear the radio for some reason, which was extremely rare.  
A new Luka song played softly over the airwaves, only loud enough for me to hear it, but just quiet enough for me to revel in the echoey silence inside of the repair shop. The statickyness of the relatively inexpensive radio combined with the speaker, that I had broken and Gorilla Glued back together countless times, did no favors for Luka’s smooth voice, nor the nice piano ballad accompaniment. I appreciate VOCALOIDs and all the little idiosyncrasies all the different producers have that make their VOCALOIDs sound different from other VOCALOIDs of the same model, even though I don’t own a VOCALOID of my own.  
When you run a VOCALOID repair shop, you’re faced with the reality of all the work that goes into not only tuning and making music with your VOCALOID, but also the work that goes into keeping up with your new companion.

The door chimes and I’m pulled out of my appreciation mode, away from listening to the godly human-like tuning that Luka had on this song, and put right back into work mode. Customers haven’t been coming into the shop as often as they once were earlier, and I mostly attribute that to the change of seasons. We usually get more customers in the months where it’s not too hot and not too cold, optimal temperatures for a VOCALOID owner to have their companion accompany them on their errands. Fall ends early here, and in exchange for that we’re given a gift of not only an August and September too warm to wear anything nice and fall-ish, but also a disappointingly snowy October and a bitterly cold November. It’s disappointing to most people but it’s fine to me - I was never a fan of holidays anyways.  
A young woman comes into the shop, appropriately dressed in a fashionable yet functional puffer jacket, knit pom pom hat, and sunglasses, that were probably hindering her more than anything since it was nearly 6 pm now and the streetlamps were on. She held a plastic bag in one hand and held the door open with the other, allowing the icy wind outside to come in, sink through my short sleeve t-shirt, and raise my goosebumps. 

“Come on, Yuki.” She says, to what I assume is her VOCALOID, standing outside. The way she spoke to her companion made it seem like this was an everyday occurrence with him, and really, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. “Yukio, get in here now.” 

I can hear Yukio outside, a KAITO model, I think, say a quick and succinct “No.”

She noticed the face I was making - a combination of discomfort from the sudden chill, and a sort of amusement at this entire situation - and gave a quick, nonverbal, “Sorry, this is so embarrassing.” sort of face. She closes the door and I take the two seconds that she’s outside to unfold the blanket I kept under my desk and wrap it around my nearly shivering shoulders. 

The woman comes back into the shop, and with the glasses I’d put on I could see the tiniest flecks of snow in her box braided hair, quickly melting as the warmth of the shop returns. I could tell that either she loved winter, or she just loved light blue - her acrylic nails and the braiding hair in her braids were the same color as Yukio, the VOCALOID she owned, who had come to stand next to her. He’s a KAITO model, just as I had suspected.  
Yukio shifts his weight from foot to foot in discomfort with a frown on his face and his arms crossed over his chest. He glares at me and I think he was told that he was going into the repair shop, which he seemed not to appreciate, judging from the way he’s glaring at me now. 

Despite his glare and his cold demeanor, he seemed to me like he was very well loved and taken care of, judging by how much she’d decorated him. Yukio was a new model KAITO, a version I’ve been seeing a lot recently since it had just dropped only about a month ago. He wore a long coat that was just a little too big for him, mismatched gloves, and a baby blue scarf that I’d like to think that the woman made for him. His hair had been rerooted, and instead of the usual true blue that the stock KAITO models had, Yukio had a silvery sky blue and white combo, and he also had an eye replacement - his right eye was that nice stock blue and his left was a periwinkle color. Other than that slight amount of attitude he had before coming in, and the way he’s messing with his scarf as he plans out how he’s going to run away as soon as he’s out of my view, Yukio didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him. 

“What can I help you with?” I ask, watching her send a quick text to someone on her iPhone. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous, I haven’t had a whole lot of experience working with these newer models yet, and I hope that whatever service Yukio needed would be something simple so there was less of a chance that I’d mess it up.  
Yukio started inching away from my desk and towards the front door, as though he really would run away. I don’t think he’d really get very far, since it seems like he’s so well taken care of.  
“I’d like to install an additional voicebank.” She says, putting her phone back into her purse and taking out the plastic bag she was carrying earlier.  
She pulls out a box and sets it on the counter. It’s KAITO Whisper, with a picture of the stock character on the front. It looks like she had already tried installing the bank and it went wrong somehow, since the box had already been opened, and quite hastily at that. In my head, I sigh in relief. I might not have much experience when it comes to these new models, but installing voicebanks was always something relatively easy to me. Hopefully the company didn’t change up any of the internal mechanics too much.

“I know I’m able to install additions on my own, but something went wrong when I tried to install this one, so I just said ‘Hey, I might as well go to the shop and have the professionals do it’, you know? I don’t want to hurt Yukio by accident.” She adds.

“I see.” I say. It’s a simple task, and something I think I’ve done to every VOCALOID in town at least once by now. “That’ll be $50. What name is it under?”  
I passed her the yellow plastic clipboard I’d been preparing, and a Sakura Miku pen that had found its way into the shop in one way or another. It was a cute pen, but I can’t for the life of me remember where I got it from. 

“Imane.” she says, and she starts hastily filling in the spaces on the clipboard. It was starting to get dark outside and the snow was starting to come down, and she and I both knew that my shop closes at 7. It was around 6:30 pm.

Imane finally noticed Yukio’s escape plan and gave him a look, causing him to sheepishly move away from the door and come back to her side. He’s still frowning and still uneasy and I don’t really blame him for acting in such a way. I guess he feels the same way I feel when I’m going into the doctor’s office to get a vaccine - that same sense of suspense in the pit of your stomach, when you know it’s not a super big deal but you just can’t shake that nervous feeling.  
Imane takes her hat off and stuffs it in the left pocket of her coat, revealing the parts between her braids, and I wonder if she’d done them today since the parts were so neat and crisp. She meticulously unclicks the pen and tucks it between the clip and the papers on the board and sets it on the counter along with the $50 and the voicebank, and I give her a simple thank you.

“This’ll take, like, 20 minutes.” I tell her, as I shut the lid on my laptop and come out through the door. It’d probably be closer to 10 minutes but I don’t like feeling rushed, especially when I’m doing tasks like this. Plus, with the extra ten minutes I might have, I’m able to double- and triple-check that everything is up to date and Yukio’s vitals are all perfect, little things like that that keep any headaches from forming down the line. 

“Come with me, Yukio.” I say, and I expect him to refuse and stay by Imane’s side, but I guess that Yukio also knew that the shop was going to close soon and that he’d already been checked in, so he was going to have to come in the easy way or the shutdown-and-carry-back way, which I always felt like shit for doing. Before the door closes behind us, Yukio is sure to give Imane a look of anger, like he’s never going to let her hear the end of this, and I smile softly in amusement.  
“You’ll be in and out really quick. I promise.” I tell him, not that he cares all that much. He’s just focused on getting out of here. Yukio follows me through the door and back to the workroom, still frowning, but now trembling a little bit as well. I wonder why VOCALOIDs were programmed to tremble like that - I can’t think of any reason why that’d be necessary other than to potentially avoid harm, or to make repair shop owners feel horrible, I guess. I thought that all the cute posters of Miku models, new and old, and signed photos of different famous Kagamine and Utatane Piko models in the hall would make the VOCALOIDs less scared, but I guess that that’s not the case. Neither Yukio or any other VOCALOID that’s been back here since I put them up has even so much as glanced at the photos. I take my keys off of the hook, and I think that I’m asking to be robbed by keeping them so close to my office door, but they’re only there because if I don’t see them as soon as I leave, I’m probably going to end up locking them inside my own office by accident. 

It’s bad, but I’m sort of glad that Yukio is shivering - I like having the peace of mind that a VOCALOID is doing well enough that they can still properly emote, unlike the shutdown emergency repairs I’ve been having to do lately, which do a great job of sucking all the happiness and energy out of the shop. Dad always said that after repairing a number of Kaai Yuki models with broken sound processors and Gumi models with damages to their Personality cortexes, you just get used to it and stop thinking about what could’ve caused all these damages, but I’m sure that I just haven’t gotten to that point in my career. I think about all those cases all the time, and they just break my heart. I know that they’re just androids, but still, the guilt just makes me want to close the shop and move on to another line of work, but I just can’t think of anyone who’d want to take this shop over.  
I open up the room with the blue door, the KAITO themed room, and usher Yukio in, locking the door behind us. I doubt that Yukio would try to run, but it’s not entirely unheard of. I just wish that Yukio and all the others that’d be coming into my shop knew that I’m not intentionally trying to hurt them. Yukio, giving up at this point, plops down dramatically on the cushioned blue chair I’d purposely bought to match the blue operation table, blue computer, and all the other blue decor. I pull up his file on the computer, and take out the disc containing his new voicebank, setting it onto the disc tray and booting it into the computer. I find myself looking at the KAITO figurine a customer had gifted me a while ago while the program loads. It takes a little bit longer than usual, but I figure that’s just because I haven’t cleaned out my Recycle Bin in a few months now, and a lot of computer bloat tends to accumulate when you’re installing programs on VOCALOIDs all day. 

“Yukio, I’m going to install an additional voicebank for you to use, okay?” I tell him, looking into his eyes. He’s still trembling, and he turns his eyes to look at a spot on the floor. “I’ll need you to shut down. I won’t hurt you.”  
He's quiet for a moment, holding still as though I could only see movement, and silent.  
“Yukio?”  
“Okay.” He says, after taking a deep breath. 

He slowly takes off the knit scarf his owner had made him (I could tell now by some of the missing stitches and the general shape of the scarf, along with the fact that she’d run out of light blue yarn around ⅔ of the way in and did the final third in lilac) and he’s very careful to not let it hit the floor. He folds it up carefully, in half, then in quarters, and sets it atop the mini freezer next to him, which doubled as an end table.

“Wait--” I start, and I stand up quick enough to knock the keyboard shelf just a little bit. Usually they’d take their scarves off and then move to the operation table, instead of shutting down in the chair. “Yukio!”  
Yukio finds his shutdown button, which was a small, insignificant bump near his collarbone just like every other KAITO model, and holds it down and while I’m trying to tell him to stop and move to the operation table the 4 seconds pass too quickly and he slumps over in the chair, dormant.

I sigh.

I silently give a rare thanks to Dad, who opted to pay extra (a rarity on its own) to get operation tables that were able to go up and down with just a press of a pedal. I hold onto Yukio’s shoulders for just a moment to make sure he doesn't just suddenly fall off of the chair and break his face or anything, and I lower the table as far as it can go. I’m no weightlifter, in fact my arms are quite weak because a growth spurt I experienced as a child kept me from going on the monkey bars as much as I wanted. Yukio, like all of the other KAITO models, weighed about 143 lbs, and I’m far from being able to lift my own weight, so I sort of half carry half drag him over to the table, knocking over a lamp and a statuette of an ice cream cone and kicking the rug under the chair in the struggle. 

He falls onto the table with an amplified metal thud loud enough to be heard outside the room but not hard enough to suspect any damage or harm to his systems. The computer does a three note chime, signifying that the voicebank was ready to be installed to a voice processor, perfect timing. His eyes are closed, and he looks peaceful to me like he was sleeping, and, well, shutdown mode is kind of like sleeping I guess.  
I take off his coat, and put it on a hanger, stuffing his mismatched gloves into the pockets, before turning back around and pulling his sweater up over his chest. I get my toolbox from the closet next to the table, the yellow-orange metal box standing out against all the blue items inside of the room. I’d been meaning to find a blue toolbox to match the KAITO room but I just haven’t gotten around to it and I just love the color yellow. Some KAITO models have yellow on them, right? I get out my smallest Phillips head screwdriver and a little tray to put all the screws in - one thing about VOCALOIDs, they’ve got tons of screws.  
I ghost my hands along the right side of Yukio’s abdomen - it turns out that the location of the chestplate opening hadn’t changed when they released the new model, thank goodness. I line up the screwdriver with the screws, keeping it straight and perfectly perpendicular with the little bits of metal, and start screwing left, slow and steady, going and unscrewing all of the necessary pieces, which used to take absolutely forever when I was a newbie, but now that I’ve got almost 6 years under my belt, Yukio’s chestplate is wide open in two minutes tops. I put on an anti static band, because the same way static is bad for a computer’s innards, static is almost worse for a VOCALOID’s.

Now was where the real differences showed. Inside, all of his parts are all labeled and much more accessible than previous models (which I didn’t know was possible, but hey, I’m a mechanic. What do I know?), they just need to be screwed and unscrewed. Everything inside of Yukio was stock, except for the Voice Processor, which Imane seemed to have upgraded to a model that had just a little too much space to the point where I don’t know if Yukio would be able to catalogue and read the different voice banks’ information in a timely manner, and the Personality cortex, which had been changed to have Shy and Neat additions on it. I haven’t seen a Shy/Neat KAITO in a while, but that personality combination wasn’t rare in the slightest.  
I use a slightly larger screwdriver to unscrew the four screws keeping his vocal processor in place, and hook it up to my computer to put the vocal information in. 

Everything was going according to plan. I deleted the remnants of the first time Imane tried to install the voicebank addition so that there’d be enough space for the new voicebank to go in correctly, which opened up a LOT of space in the storage, thankfully, and I started installing the new voicebank. Now, the boring part comes - waiting for the damn thing to install itself onto the processor. I stretch my back out over the edge of the desk chair and my back and shoulders pop just a little too loudly, something I’ve been used to doing daily so my joints don’t start to hurt, but then I remember that I could be checking on Yukio’s vitals instead of going through with my daily chiropractic routine.  
I come back to him and I double press on each of his hands and the baby blue ‘nail polish’ on his fingertips start glowing, revealing the LED lights underneath the paint. Finger lights were a common addition and they often broke just for no reason at all. I would’ve gone more in depth with the vitals but the computer chimed saying the installation was successful and frankly, I was ready to go ahead and close up shop for today.  
I carefully eject Yukio’s voice processor from the computer and gingerly put it back in the square-shape indentation in his chest that it had come from, a magnet that I hadn’t notice snapping it into place before I screwed it back in gingerly, careful not to strip the screws on accident or screw it in so hard that the case would break, since that’d be an expensive repair that’d be coming out of my own moderately lined pockets. I put his chest plate back on, covering all his processors and cortexes and VOCALOID guts and count out 20 screws that needed to be put back on and 20 holes, a perfect match. I silently thank whatever higher power that was looking out for me because a missing screw isn't nearly as expensive as it is a pain in the ass. It takes 1 minute to screw everything back, make sure his sweater wasn’t stuck inside him somehow (it happened once.), and sit him up on the edge of the table. 

I put his coat back on him, and his gloves, and put his sweater on his lap under his hands. Usually I wouldn’t bother putting all the clothes and accessories back on but it was cold outside, and Yukio probably needed it. Plus, he didn’t have on that many accessories, thankfully. I had a decora kei themed Gumi come in for a personality addition around a month ago and I still shudder when I think about all the shirts and bracelets she was dressed in. I still find errant pieces of glitter and rhinestones in my laundry today.  
I do a last check to make sure that all of his things were together, and do a deep breath before powering him back on again, my fingers on the side of his collarbone for only 5 seconds and I still can’t let go of the feeling that maybe I somehow fucked up and he won’t turn on, but his eyes flutter open and that dread dissipates. 

“You’re all set.” I say to him, and he looks around the room confused for a moment before his memory sets in and he remembers that he’s at the VOCALOID equivalent to a doctor’s office. “You can whisper now. Here.”  
Here’s where that mini freezer comes in. In the KAITO room, I keep all sorts of different kinds of ice cream and popsicles, because most, if not all KAITOs love their ice cream. I don’t know if that was something that was programmed into them, but I’ve yet to meet a KAITO who didn’t like ice cream. I hand him a vanilla ice cream sandwich, since it could stay mostly in the wrapper, which will keep his fingers from getting sticky, and vanilla ice cream won’t stain if the sandwich ends up melting. Instantly, his frown disappears and changes to a shy smile.  
“Thank you.” He whispers. It feels good to know that the installation was successful. 

I unlock the door and bring Yukio back to Imane, who’d gotten comfortable in the lobby loveseat, reading one of the many out of print courtesy magazines I had put on the coffee table.  
“Everything went smoothly.” I say, and I give Imane her disc back. She probably wouldn’t need it anymore since the bank had already been installed and was blank now, but too many customers have argued with me about how I keep the now-blank discs to burn DVDs onto them. 

“Thank you so much!” Imane says, putting the magazine down and straightening them. Yukio comes over to her and she fixes his hair and scarf, which I didn’t know that there were even problems with.

“It’s no problem. Please come again.” I give her a courteous smile. I wish that all of my repair jobs were quick and inexpensive tasks like this one, and well, they had been for a little while now. I hope that big changes to this pattern don’t happen any time soon, but something is telling me that change is coming, and fast. I turn off the radio, and then the lights, once Imane leaves the shop, and head upstairs to spend the last few hours of the day not working. That night, I dream about Yukio and Imane, and about the cases that came and went and pink elephants on parade. 


	2. 2

The next morning, I woke up only to find that the thick fog that had settled over the city as I slept had wriggled its way through my ears and nose and seeped into my brain, smothering my thoughts with cotton fluff and dampening the sound of the alarm that’d been blaring for no less than two hours now. I forced myself to sit up in bed and even though I had slept for no less than 10 hours, I felt like every ounce of energy I should’ve had upon waking up had been sucked out of me, as expected on mornings where the curse of forgetting to shut the windows overnight unexpectedly sneak up on you. I pick up my phone and turn off the alarm, noticing that it hadn’t charged at all overnight and the battery had just 11 percent, and that it was now almost 12 pm. Thank goodness it’s Saturday.

My feet swing over the edge of my bed and they hastily meet with the pink sherpa slippers I’d finally gotten around to purchasing. How I tolerated the oftentimes frigid tile on my bare feet remains a mystery to me to this day. My hands swipe over my nightstand hoping to find at least one allergy pill, even if it’s a weak Children’s pill, and of course, my searching is fruitless and I have to get up. I cross my fingers and silently pray to whichever god is listening, hoping that I bought allergy medication last week and there wasn’t the empty bottle in the medicine cabinet that I half remember being in there last time I checked. I open the cabinet, and the bottle is there staring right at me, which was only half of the good news I needed. My hand reaches out for it - the moment of truth that’d determine the events for the rest of the day - and it’s light and empty when I pick it up. Damn it. 

Now I really have to get up. 

I shuffle over to my dresser and abandon my slippers (read: kicked them back so they're in the general vicinity of my bed) and get dressed in a matching grey sweatshirt and sweatpants set that was criminally comfortable and vaguely stylish. 10 minutes is all I should need to get in and out of the drugstore and back to the rest of my day. I closed my window just a little too hard and opened the blinds and the paltry amount of sunlight coming through the window did little to improve my mood.  
The banner I kept over my bed, which competed with all the other brightly colored post-its and papers for real estate, read ‘Find Beauty in Everything’, which was a reminder I try earnestly to keep in the back of my mind. There is beauty in all things, but definitely not weather induced allergies, that’s for sure. I close my window just a little too hard and open the blinds, and sometimes I almost forget how much more tolerable living on the upper floor of one of the only VOCALOID repair shops in town is when you’re able to get this much sun in your room. 

I made sure that the small bantu knots I’d managed to put in my hair last night were still knotted, and downstairs I go, keys and lanyard in one hand and a white-knuckled grip on the railing in the other. 

The shop door was locked, and I double- and triple checked. Theft wasn’t much of an issue in this part of town but I don’t want to take my chances because even beyond the boundary between Earth and Hell, Dad would never let me hear the end of it. My car was the old, slowly dying Acura sedan that was parked on the street outside almost all hours of the day, and what I lacked in patience for driving around in this densely populated town of shit drivers, I more than made up for in parallel parking prowess. The nearest drugstore was 8 minutes away.

Actually, it’s 2 minutes of driving, and 6 minutes of traffic and road rage related fuckery, give or take. I was graciously given an extra helping of traffic related waiting and I’m in the store in 12 minutes instead. 

There’s all sorts of tabloids lining the walls, the usual mindless drivel about which celebrities are dating who, the latest trends in VOCALOID models (which seems to be a resurgence in the chibi models, which were a nightmare to work on), and an upcoming challenge among VOCALOID enthusiasts, which drew me closer.  
Maybe not all of the tabloids were drivel.  
I took that magazine and the bottle of anti allergy pills I had originally come in for and also a pack of gummy bears for the ride home. It was a rough week, I deserve them.

In seconds, the bottle was open and I had already downed two pills with one of the many water bottles I had started and forgotten to finish. There was no work to do today, so I enjoyed a little bit of free time just driving around the city while I waited for my symptoms to leave me alone.

I found myself watching the oak’s branches reach over the street to hold hands with the birch on the other side, as though they were huddling together in this cold in a futile attempt to keep their leaves from dropping every time the wind rustled them.  
The shouts of the children playing four square and tag and tetherball at the public park easily made its way through my windows as I passed by them and so did the blaring of trumpets and pianos inside of the jazz clubs I’d told myself I’d go to someday when I gained the ability to pry myself out of my bouts of isolation and introversion. There were so many things to do in this city - it’s densely populated for a reason - but yet I found myself driving towards the one place I usually went when I had free time to be spent outside of the shop but no desire to be around anyone else, the creek. 

The creek was nothing special. A little trickle of water that probably came from the big river that intersected the city, that probably contained more rejectamenta and crap you don’t want in your body than a gas station restroom. There weren’t ever any fish in the creek, nor was there ever any (living) wildlife there, but yet there was just something so calming about watching the water run over the little pebbles and smooth stones that made up the bottom, and just being so far detached from everything else that was happening, even if it’s just for an hour or so. I missed it the same way someone misses their weird (yet harmless) cousin, I hadn’t visited in months. 

I park on the street, about as close as I can get to the creek. I don’t know if anyone else knows about this little secret spot of mine, and I’m not sure if I wish anyone did know, but what I’m certain of is that I wish there was a parking lot so I wouldn’t have to walk so far. The air smells of petrichor and wet moss and warm nickels and it only gets stronger as I venture through the pines and brambles that secluded the area from the rest of the city. I get past the second pine tree, the one I’d carved my first initial, R, into when I was in 2nd grade, when I see it. 

A foot, belonging to a body thrown in the creek. Shit.

I immediately turn back to return to my car and blame the sudden chill and the sweat on the back of my neck on my diminishing allergies and the cold.  
I came out here to buy the medicine I needed and have some alone time - I should’ve known better than to go to the damn creek. I always knew that they’d find a body out here, it's so secluded and quiet here, it’s the perfect place to dump a body… if I don’t say anything will I get questioned by the police? Ugh, I think I need to go and check.

I pace around and hyperventilate for a few moments as I try to psych myself up and put on my Big Person Pants to go see the creek’s body. I hope it’s not too gory or too decayed and that I don’t accidentally do something to incriminate myself…

The felled branches of the maple trees and the random pinecones and the wet leaves make the ground slippery and crunchy and I almost fall into the creek and contract 30 different diseases, but thankfully the only brambly bush that was ballsy enough to grow this close to the flowing petri dish provided me with purchase and what felt like 700 cuts all over my hands. 

From this close, I could see that it wasn’t a human body in the creek, it was a VOCALOID - some kind of BIG AL, to be exact, and not the cute redesigned one. It’s not the really old one, the one that heavily treaded the line between zombie Elvis and nightmare fuel, but it falls somewhere between those two points. He’s ugly cute, from what I can see.  
Letting go of the bush I try to get back up, cursing under my breath and internally laughing in relief - at least I didn’t have to go to the police or deal with the nightmares from finding a corpse in the creek. It takes a moment, but I get back up to the trees and start heading back to the Acura again, and something stops me in my tracks. 

What if this was a test?  
A chance to redeem myself? 

There’s no way.  
Who knows how long that android’s been sitting in the creek, waterlogged? I haven’t been here in a while. 

My hand is on the handle of the door and I feel a wave of guilt wash over me. There was an entire VOCALOID in the creek, filled with water and just left there for nature to overtake it, with no care to any of the batteries or delicate components inside, and here I was, a mechanic, just getting ready to leave it there.  
Maybe it is a chance to redeem myself. 

I sigh and roll my shoulders and stretch out my arms and legs. The VOCALOID was 6’5” and a whopping 183 lbs (plus however much water got into him), and I had no one around to help me. No one around that really understood, at least. The ground isn’t as slippery and unmanageable as it was before, since I’d scouted a way to get down to the water that had way less wet leaves and mud and more grass and rocks, which would let me get down without falling in this time. I hook my arms under the android’s shoulders and put my entire weight into pulling him out of the creek and of course, his weight and the slippery ground work against me. I tried pushing, too, maybe if I pushed him out, it’d make things easier, but it only undid all the progress I’d made in pulling him, so I just continued to pull, until my legs, back, and arms all started to ache and I had water all over my sweatsuit with no progress made. 

I continue on, though, since I had already been here for so long trying to get him out. It didn’t matter to me if he was to broken to turn on once I get him out, I at least want to minimize any further water damage at least. Every time I pulled on him, some of the water inside him poured out, which only made things marginally easier. 

One last big pull about 30 minutes later and he finally comes out of the creek, leaving me on my back in the damp grass and an old VOCALOID at my side, full of water and covered in algae. Now, the second part of this struggle comes, which I’m hoping is easier - getting him into my car. 

I drag him through the muddy grass and it’s so much easier to do once you’ve got a good bit of momentum going and you ignore the fact that you’re going to have to figure out how to get all the mud and algae and creek muck off of him later, and the fact that said mud, algae, and creek muck was going to be hanging out in your back seat because there’s no way a VOCALOID this big would fit in the trunk. 

The doors to my car were already unlocked, so I open one up, tip him as much as I can to minimize how much water soaks into the seats (I never knew a VOCALOID could hold this much), and I do a weird push and shove that I’m sure will have me sore tomorrow just to get his joints to bend enough to get into the less-than-stellar amount of space in the back. If I ever had to dispose of a body, this car would be a horrible asset, I swear. 

I get in the driver’s seat, turn my key the obligatory 3 times, and my engine finally comes to Iife and I’m on my way back to the shop. There’s no way I’m going to carry him all the way upstairs - all the repair rooms were downstairs anyways - but I’m not sure how many customers I’ll have on monday and I’m not psyched to have any potential creek bugs crawl out of him and make a home in one of the repair rooms, but I can’t find any other alternatives. 

I think that my car is a little slower than usual because of the android in my backseat, and it makes my drive torturous. Hopefully, the subtle tinting that Dad had done on the windows was enough to keep any passers by from looking into the back seat and seeing what looks like a human at first glance - I really don’t want the police to get involved with this. There were only a few close calls, a few assholes on the way back, and this one woman with her overly curious child. I saw someone with a MEIKO pass by as well (whose outfit was very cute), and the VOCALOID looked in, but didn’t do anything, so the drive back went much smoother than expected. 

I park behind the shop and get the hand truck that was just inside the back, thankful that I’d finally remembered to put it somewhere where I’d remember it, open my back door, and wrestle the android out of my damn car and onto the truck, praying that he stays balanced while even more water pours out. If he somehow managed to drag himself on this rough, poorly taken care of asphalt in the parking lot, it’d sand down his flesh in an instant. 

The hand truck slams against the wall in the back room with a solid thunk, and I roll the VOCALOID off of the little metal platform and onto the pile of towels and rags I’d set up on the floor. I take off his clothes, an extremely hideous patterned collared shirt and a pair of slacks that seemed to have torn and ripped either before or after I got him out the creek, and I start removing all the rusted screws holding him together. 

I slowly open his chest panel with a rag covering my fingers, wincing and bracing myself, but it does little to keep me from jumping back and screaming when no less than 100 mutant creek earwigs crawl out of him, scatter around the room, and hide in all the cracks and crevices in the room.  
I shake off my heebie jeebies, roll him over and shake him a little more and more bugs and water come from him and soak the towels.  
He was gutted of all of the components except a basic personality and his voicebank, which makes one wonder what the point is in taking out all these old components and leaving the android, the components that came out of him wouldn’t work with any of the new models we have anyways.  
I’ll check on him later, and hopefully he’ll be a little bit drier so I can work on his insides - I’ve been meaning to start a new project anyways.

Spraying a cloth with some disinfectant, I start to wipe off the germs and algae that had started growing on his skin, and make a mental note to take my car in for a deep clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try and update this every Tuesday and Friday. It's been a few years since the last time I wrote any fanfiction, much less updated one on a consistent schedule. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!  
> xoxo jeebie


	3. 3

The snow’s been lingering longer and longer lately, but I don’t think it’s here to stay yet.  
It’s only September, and even though it’s usually cold here this month, I’ve not seen a long term snow come to stay this early on in my 19 years of living here. Snow like that was reserved for the week before Halloween, so that the kids in town could hope for the snow to melt before their spooky festivities, but always be let down by an additional 3 inches of snow in the space of an hour.  
I’ve been there, done that.

It’s been six days since I took the VOCALOID from the creek. He’s been sitting in storage since then and I only go in there to change the towels so they don’t start growing a culture. Being back there gives me the creeps— I feel like some sort of monster working on VOCALOIDs while I’ve got a naked one hanging out unconscious in the back. I walk past him every day, since he’s literally at the bottom of the stairs, and I always look away from him and try to clear my mind so I could work. No matter how loud I played my white noise generator, how much I forced myself to stand the cold in an ill suited t-shirt, and no matter how much I pinched myself to stay on task, I thought about him every hour of every day this week.

I wonder who he used to belong to.  
What was his personality set to?  
Why was he in the creek? 

Was he supposed to be found?

I doubt that VOCALOIDs have any conscience beyond their programming. 

However, I can’t imagine that he’d be very happy knowing that his previous owner literally gutted and abandoned him in the place that's as close as you can get to ‘middle-of-nowhere’ in this city. 

What could they have possibly wanted to do with such old parts?

With each day that passes, I lose hope that he’ll charge, much less turn on, but each day he also gets drier and drier, giving me hope that I can fix him somehow.

There were no major repairs to be done this week, which was a blessing. Only voicebank additions and loose components and screw replacements, which were my favorite because they’re so easy and inexpensive and hassle free to do. It’s not because I’m lazy (well, that might be a small part of it) but because there’s a smaller chance that I can mess things up. 

I’m just 19 years old, and I’ve only been running this shop on my own for the past three years. I learned what I know from Dad, but only because there was never anything else for me to do inside the shop other than watch him work - and that in itself was rare as well. 

I sat in my cushy desk chair trembling, counting down the last ten minutes until I could close shop and head to the storage room, smash more of the bugs that’d probably be bold and in plain sight, and take care of the VOCALOID. In all my efforts of not thinking about him, I’d ended up naming him Rex.  
Just calling him by his model name felt too impersonal, and since whomever it was who left him in the creek for weeks abandoned him, I decided, begrudgingly, that he was my VOCALOID now.  
I don’t know how I feel about this. I mean I certainly could’ve left him there, but what type of mechanic would that make me, to deny a VOCALOID in need?

8:00 came too quickly and the usual relief that only comes from the weight of a week’s worth of customers and their repairs being lifted off my shoulders is only half fulfilling.  
I locked the door and just sat in the lobby.

I recognize the feeling that I’m setting myself up to be disappointed - something that I feel much more often than I care to admit.  
Rex is broken, obviously, and also spent weeks soaking in the creek— his charging system and battery are probably shot, and his repairs are more than likely going to be stuff beyond my level of expertise.

I make sure to wait in the dark for another hour before I head back there. I count the tiles on the floor as I go - 27 tiles - and I notice the echo my footsteps make through the narrow hallway. In hand, I have a pair of gym shorts and an Extremely Large sweater, that I had also thrifted while I wasn’t thinking about Rex. I had gone to the thrift store just in search of old books and Barry White vinyls (both were sold out) and I had just so happened to see a sweater that was the perfect size for a VOCALOID as obnoxiously broad shouldered and barrel chested as Rex. 

“Alright.” I take a deep breath, and turn the light on in the back. Rex is still there, laying on the dry towels just as I left him.

I start with his shorts and I have to wrestle with his stiff joints just to get them on.  
Not willing to go through with the same troubles again, I get up and go get the mechanical lubricant spray out from the Miku themed room because putting a shirt on Rex was definitely going to be more difficult than the shorts. I imagine it’s the same type of difficult that putting clothes on a baby is, in the way you have to watch out for elbows and stray pinkies and stuff, only that Rex’s elbows are stiff and his fingers don’t move due to their neglect. 

I shake the bottle, which felt suspiciously like a can of spray paint, guide the little straw nozzle attachment thing into the seams around his joints and start spraying short bursts into his knees, ankles, and hips first.  
This dry lubricant was much better than any oils or heavy greases I used to use. To think that I used to have the same VOCALOIDs coming in twice per month because the oil between their joints got all gummed up with dust and dirt and they suddenly couldn’t move their fingers anymore.  
It was always, and I mean ALWAYS the fingers, which had me wondering just what exactly the owners had their VOCALOIDs doing.  
I moved Rex’s ankles around first, moving slowly at first to make sure the lubricant was coating his entire joint, doing additional sprays to make sure that he was moving smoother than I’m sure he’d ever moved. Even if he doesn’t wake up, you can’t say I didn’t at least try. 

I did the same to his shoulders and elbows. The smaller, more complex joints of his wrists and elbows were a nightmare to spray but I succeeded nonetheless, and the sweater, which had ‘Wheaton’ printed over the chest, went on so much easier than expected, which I was grateful for, since the shirt was still just a little too small for him. 

Dragging the long towel he was currently laying on, I pull him over to the stairs, closer to one of the only outlets out here in the storage room, and sit him up against the wall. He looks so much better now than he did before. Now that he had a name, and some clothes, he looked more like a VOCALOID that belonged to someone.  
His skin was still sunbleached from being outside for so long. If he wakes up, I’d take him to a detailer to see if I could get that sorted out, and maybe get a haircut for him, too.

My hands tremble so much that I’m barely able to pick up the charger to plug him in.

I guide the charger, one of the magnetic models that just charge through the skin without the need for an unsightly charging port (he was new enough for one of these, which came as a surprise to me), to his abdomen, moving his sweater up and letting out that breath I didn't know I had taken in once the charger snaps to his body and the LED on the side of his headset/ears started flashing to indicate that he was, in fact, charging. 

I just stand there and watch him for a little while, then I go upstairs to my room. 

I had only read that magazine I picked up last week a few days ago, and only then did I realize that the magazine just happened to be a month out of date and one of the new employees at the drugstore probably just forgot it while they were tasked with clearing out all the old magazines. In so many words, the contest had been over for a week now. Not that I could compete anyways - not only do I not know anything about music composition or VOCALOID training, I don’t have a VOCALOID who can sing. I don’t know if Rex can sing… but his singing prowess is the least of my worries at the moment. 

The prize for the top four producers was one of 4 different one-of-a-kind GACKPOIDs, which were just as beautiful as I thought they’d be. The event sponsored custom VOCALOIDs were always a sight to behold. 

Each GACKPOID had a custom personality and their own two page spread in the magazine to show off their details, and I’ll be honest - it took a lot for me to not just take the photos out and tape them up in my room. 

The first GACKPOID had a sakura theme going on, reminiscent of the many iterations of Sakura Miku I’ve seen since I’ve been a VOCALOID mechanic. This one had his warm-toned purple hair dyed with a baby pink ombre, with sakura blossom shapes somehow painted into his hair as well (either it’s editing magic, or dye magic). He wore a kimono that was also light pink, accented with a darker, reddish pink that matched his eyes and the flower shaped barrettes he had in his hair. 

The second GACKPOID had a summery beach vibe going on, complete with sky blue hair (which was still long enough to be put in a ponytail, but much shorter than standard length), and eyes the color of purple-blue sea glass. I’ve never seen a GACKPOID who wasn’t dressed in some sort of traditional Japanese attire, and this one was no different. His yukata was the same shade of blue as his hair, and had wavy patterns printed onto it in a nice purplish color. He has multicolored beads in his hair that look like they’d reflect beautifully when the sun hits them, and his headset was purple with blue waves adorning them.

The third GACKPOID was autumn themed with orange-red hair and forest green eyes. Instead of wearing the same attire the other GACKPOIDs were wearing, he wore a long cloak that was a color closer to black than it was to green. His standout feature was the intricate pattern he had on his skin, drawn in what looked to be glowing white paint. The swirls and branches in the pattern on his skin accentuate his stock-shaped features and the many beads he had in his hair, too. His headphones were fashioned to look almost like the antlers of some sort of woodland creature. 

The fourth and final GACKPOID was the one that caught my eye the most. His hair was rerouted with shiny black hair instead of the stock purple, put up into a high ponytail in typical GACKPOID fashion, with a deep red hannya mask adorning his head as well. He also had red markings on his eyes reminiscent of the red eyeliner that some geishas wore, which I found only a little bit odd, but nice nonetheless. His kimono was made of a finely printed houndstooth material and the jinbaori he had on top of it was the same red as his mask, with the same gold accents too. He had simple gold beads in his hair, matching without detracting from all the patterns he had on, and his headset was red and pointed out almost like elf ears.

I’m just enamored with all the different designs they have. Stock GACKPOIDs nearly always looked graceful and pretty, but these four one-of-a-kind ones are absolutely stunning.  
Don’t get me wrong though. I still don’t really want a VOCALOID of my own. 

Well, maybe. Rex is cool, I guess. 

Thumbing through that magazine really helped me stave off my shaky hands and racing thoughts. Enough so that I’m dead asleep come 11 pm, breaking my bad habit of staying up until 3 in the morning worrying just to worry. 

There was something rustling in my room. I fall back asleep.

I hear a few footsteps, and I blame it on my mostly slumbering mind. 

Then I hear the quiet clicking and whirring of internal gears and cogs, the tiny beeps and electrical snaps just a little too close. Maybe it’s about time I replaced the extension cord under my bed. That doesn’t matter. I go back to sleep and my bed feels so much more comfortable that it ever has. I’m practically drowning in pillows and blankets at this point. 

I feel a familiar sense of eyes staring holes into me. I move my sleep mask.

“WHAT THE F--” I cut myself off and scoot back in my bed, my back up against my quilted headboard as I try desperately to calm my rapidly beating heart and quick breaths. 

I wasn’t planning on seeing my new VOCALOID standing over my bed, his face just inches away from mine first thing this morning. I mean, I’m glad he’s doing well enough to have fully charged and walked up the stairs on his newly greased joints, but still. How’d he know I’m up here?

I noticed that my phone’s alarm, which would be playing as loudly as possible, had been turned off. That must’ve been why he came - the sound must’ve made him come up here.

“Master!” Rex smiles broadly and wraps his arms around me much faster than I’m able to dodge in my freshly awoken state, and hugs me so tightly that all the air in my lungs escapes and I think he might’ve bruised one of my ribs. “I’m so happy that you’re alive!” 

“Rex…. let me… go.” I croak out, and he’s practically lifted me halfway out of the bed now. If he keeps hugging me so tight, I’m not going to be alive much longer. He appeases a few moments later, and I fall back onto my bed, sucking in all the air I can. 

Either the water fried some of the components that made up his “brain”, or he was programmed like this before he was left in the creek. I’m going to hope it’s the water’s fault that he has no idea how strong he is, and that he didn’t know that humans slept and he didn’t have to get so close to me to count my breaths while I’m unconscious. Though… deep down, I feel even happier than he does that he’s alive. I’m a VOCALOID owner now.  
I have a VOCALOID.  
Rex belongs to me. 

This is going to take some getting used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in my day, there used to be these things called Adoptables on DeviantArt (do they still do those?) and they were all just themed palette swaps of different character drawings. I always thought they were cool as fuck - even though I rarely bought them, I always loved the different designs they had. 
> 
> I'm doing the same sort of thing here (can you tell?)
> 
> Feedback (read: constructive criticism) is welcome.


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGHHHH late chapter, I know. Expect sporadic, semifrequent uploads, Uni just picked up a few days ago. :/
> 
> p.s. this is gonna pick up really soon, and i'm working on a few companion fics with similar scenarios >;) 
> 
> stay tuned
> 
> xoxo doomy

Rex seems to have some sort of issue with personal space. 

He was in my hip pocket as I picked out the outfit I was going to wear today, his feet magically made their way under mine somehow as I went to the kitchen, and he stood just mere inches away from me as I made a simple bowl of cereal, watching with pure amazement as though he was unfamiliar with the arcane magic that was Aldi’s brand Crispy Rice and almond milk. If we were any closer, we’d be inside each other, which was a thought I shuddered at. 

“Rex.” I say, and it comes out a little firmer than I’d want, but I literally had just woken up and I haven’t had a chance to eat my breakfast yet. 

“Yes, Master?” 

“You don’t have to stand so close to me.” 

Rex takes a few steps back and sits across from me at the little folding table I kept in the kitchen. He’s so funny looking, a large VOCALOID in such a smallish chair, and he’s careful not to bump the table with his knees as he sits and it’s only now that I notice that no one has sat in that chair for years now. There were two chairs at the table, and I only ever sat in the one I’m sitting in right now. I’ve been thinking of putting it in storage somewhere, but I never got around to it. There’s no use now, anyways. 

I don’t really like how Rex calls me Master, to be honest. It’s the basic greeting that VOCALOIDs use when they’re referring to their owner (which, like most things, can be changed) but right now I can’t think of another title I can use that didn’t sound so…. like that. 

I check my email and respond to the simple google-able customer questions in there between unsatisfying soggy bites of Rice Krispies, scroll through Twitter, retweeting any info about upcoming VOCALOID events as I take bites of the apple I sliced. 

Today, I think that I’ll go to that nice hair salon that’s about an hour south of here. Treating myself is something I have trouble doing, so that should be a step in the direction of doing so. 

But, I have a feeling that they won’t let Rex in there, because of how he looks. The only difference he has now compared to how he looked only last week is that he’s clothed now and that he’s not covered in creek grime anymore. His outfit barely matches and he doesn’t even have shoes yet. I don’t want him to feel out of place against all the fashionable ZOLA Project VOCALOIDs that’d probably be in there or anything.

I can’t leave him here, because he’ll probably find a way to burn the place down, and possibly hurt himself with the tools and software downstairs… or break everything. Plus, you’re not supposed to leave a VOCALOID at home unless they’ve been trained to take care of the house and stay home anyways (I highly doubt Rex has been trained to do that, just based on how he’s been acting).

I also can’t just leave him in the car, either. An image of Rex busting the windows to get out and join me in the salon comes to mind, and so does an image of some wackos busting my windows to get Rex out just because they think it’s cruel to keep a VOCALOID in a car for some reason, and I almost feel my bank account shuddering in fear at the prospect of paying to get my windows replaced.

Dammit, I’ll just do my hair at home. I’ll look up a tutorial on styling VOCALOID hair— I doubt it’s that complicated. 

Rex was looking out the small window next to the table, out to that little soul patch of crunchy hay-colored grass that was outside, and the parking lot with its shitty asphalt rife with crater sized potholes, and to my car too.  
I wonder what he’s thinking about. He woke up in a much better mood than I was expecting, but maybe that’s just because of his model. Personalities differ from android to android, and I’ve only met two other BIG ALs, but both were just big softies. I’ve only known Rex for a few hours now, but I have a feeling that he’s going to be the same. 

He’s probably just taking everything in right now, and I feel kind of bad about sitting here and eating my breakfast in silence without talking to him or anything. I know that you’re able to talk to your VOCALOID… But about what? Most of the VOCALOIDs I see on TV do little menial tasks like play music, do calculations, or check on your stocks for you. There’s a few different plugins you can get that allow your VOCALOIDs to do other things too, like tell jokes and stuff, but Rex is completely bare of all plugins and everything, other than his battery and voice, it seems. 

Rex turns to look at me and I can almost see a question trying to be formed in his mind. I didn’t think I was sitting here staring at him for as long as I have been. I want to ask him what he remembers about his old master. What he remembers about the moments leading up to being dumped in the creek.

“I’m going to do your hair today, Rex. How’s that sound?” I say.  
Now that I think about it, my hair could probably last another day before it was time for me to wash it. Maybe after I do his hair, I can go out and look for an outfit for him too, then I can go to the salon tomorrow instead. 

I watch his face for a response, waiting while he thinks about it as though this were some sort of life-or-death situation, before finally he responds with a simple “Okay, Master”. 

There’s no room for personality when you’re missing so many of your components, I suppose. 

If I have enough money after buying his clothes, which I probably will thanks to the repairs I’ve done this month, I’ll be sure to buy some components soon. I haven’t even begun to think about what sort of personality I want him to have. Curious? Friendly? Kind? 

Maybe I’ll just take him to a component store and let him pick his personality instead. 

Rex gets up at the same exact second as I do, and stands idly in the middle of the kitchen while I wash my dishes and put them back in the cabinet where they belong. I fold the chair he was sitting in at the table and before I can even lift it, Rex takes it from my hands. 

“Oookay…” I say, under my breath - I wasn’t expecting him to take it from my hands. I was totally capable of bringing it into the bathroom on my own, but I guess that’s what he’s here for - to make things easier. 

Wielding one of my many trusty combs and a spray bottle heavy with a solution of water and sweet-smelling moisturizing conditioner, I mentally prepare myself to tackle Rex’s hair, which was a lot more tangled and unkempt than I remember it being.  
I spray his entire head with the conditioner, careful not to spray his face on accident, and I can’t help but notice that even though it’s of higher quality, a VOCALOID’s hair feels kind of like Barbie hair, or kind of like the more expensive braiding hair I can buy at the beauty supply. This’ll be easy. If I had a quarter for every hour I spent detangling hair, I’d have enough money to close the shop and live on my own private island.

A few passes of my comb and a gallon of elbow grease later, I’ve detangled his hair enough that I can see the little sections of white hair on his temples, solidifying that (if his size didn’t give it away) Rex was, in fact, a BIG AL. Rex just sits there, unnervingly silent, looking around to count how many of the tiles on the floor were cracked, and how it was about time I bought a new rug because the one I was standing on did no favors in protecting my bare feet from the coldness of the tile. 

“Rex, do you remember anything about your old master?” comes spilling out from my mouth, and Rex doesn’t immediately respond. He just sits there, looking down at the floor, idly tapping his fingers against his knees. 

I get the old pair of clippers out of the closet, trying to remember the technique used in the YouTube tutorial I’d watched earlier.

“You are my master.” Rex says. Incorrect response. It’s probably due to water damage, component loss, or any of the other numerous cards stacked against him. 

“Okay.” I say. There’s not really any use in interrogating him right now. How does he know that I’m his master? He’s not registered to me. All the water inside him definitely fried the registration chip.

I use the comb to hold his hair, starting at the nape of his neck, shaving down the already short hair with unsteady hands as I try to crudely emulate the slight fade the overly bubbly woman in the video did.  
What happened to how Rex was acting earlier? VOCALOIDs don’t act like that fresh out the box (which aside from the damage, was where Rex would be right now). They don’t wake you up with bone crushing hugs, especially not when they're missing a personality.  
It takes a while for me to get the fade even. 

I reach into the bag on the counter and get out the foam rollers I used to use back when my hair was relaxed, carefully rolling sections of Rex’s hair into them. You can’t use heat tools like a curling iron on synthetic VOCALOID hair, and I want his hair to have a sort of wavy pompadour type of look, like the greasers from the fifties.

“Rex, do you know who your master was?” I ask again, speaking slower, with more emphasis as though that’d help him pull his nonexistent memories out from the components probably still lost deep under the creek rocks.

“YYYY---ou Rr-mmY MAst3rR” Comes out of Rex, his voice suddenly turned up to its maximum volume, harsh and grating as it bounced off the walls and into my ears. “m4s-~tER, MaSZtt---TtR, MA—” he repeats himself over and over, until he suddenly falls silent. 

“...Rex?” No response. “Rex, are you okay?”

It’s then that I notice that he’d shut himself down, so I run as quickly as I can downstairs to get one of the chargers. His battery was probably low, and he didn’t notify me. How long could he have possibly been awake? I don’t move him out of the chair, I just plug in the charger and hook him up just in here while.

Why the hell did that happen? My heart was still beating out of my chest at the sudden loud noise.  
I focus on the sound of the blow dryer, the way its heatless setting was so much quieter than its normal setting, and how the noise echoed softly off the walls in the tiny room, how its whisper blew the little hair clippings off of Rex’s shoulders and onto the floor to be swept up later. 

I take the rollers out of his hair once they’ve dried, careful not to crush the synthetic curls in my slightly clammy, cold hands, and pick them apart with a light coating of eco styler gel on my fingers. The haircut looked a lot better than I was expecting— the fade looked like it had been done by an amateur of coutse, but the waviness in his hair now and the perfect coil on his forehead more than made up for what that lacked. 

I rest my hands on his shoulders, and try to loosen the furrow in my brow and the frown on my face before I find the power button at the side of his neck. He stirs not before long, and adjusts himself for balance in the chair.

“Rex, are you okay? You kind of… spooked me there.” I ask, not moving my hands off his shoulders yet. I find myself rubbing light, nervous circles— maybe he wasn’t as okay as I had originally thought. 

“Yes.” He says. “I am Sorry, Master.” 

In one of the counter drawers, under a bunch of broken rubber bands and old containers of hair products I had decided were shit, I find the hand mirror I’d been looking for and give it to Rex, who opens his hand but doesn’t wrap his fingers around it for some reason, so I carefully do it for him.  
“Here. I finished your haircut.” No response. “Rex, do you like your new haircut?” 

“Yes, Master.” 

I can’t help but frown. As life threatening as it was, I want the Rex from this morning back. Even if he was watching me sleep, turned my alarm off so I overslept, and nearly suffocated me, he was much more interesting than this simple Yes/No Rex I have now. He wasn’t even looking at himself in the hand mirror, he was just staring vacantly like he had been doing at the tiles earlier, and the window outside. 

“I’m going to fix you.” I pat his shoulder a final time. “I’m going to fix you.” 

I had no idea which internals of his were fried, nor to what extent, but damn if it wasn’t my job to fix this problem.

“Okay, Rex, stand up, please.” I command, and he stands up instantly. I fold up the chair, and he doesn’t take it from me this time as I put it back in it’s rightful spot in the kitchen. He is close behind me though, as he always has been. 

It seems like he’s only capable of the most basic functions all VOCALOIDs have at the moment— yes/no, doing simple tasks, and following a master around. He can’t talk to me, or tell me anything, because he’s broken.  
I can't help but daydream about him talking one day, telling me about something he dreamt about, or something about his old master. Waiting around a corner so he can scare me when I walk past. Reading me a headline… just… something. I want him to tell me something other than yes or no, other than his battery status, other than “I’m sorry” or “you’re my master”... I just don’t know how long that’ll take.


	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex gets a new personality, and The Mechanic gets a special request.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just going back and fixing grammatical errors chapter 6 will be out v soon beep beep

I'm going to be honest. 

The quiet Yes/No Rex was starting to grow on me. I bought another one of my favorite chairs (the cheapest folding chairs at IKEA, mind you— they have you walking like you’ve gotten your back blown out, but they make my wallet feel happy) and he would just sit there behind me in the little office space, staring blankly. He’d gaze at the owners as they came in, probably calculating if they’re VOCALOIDs too or not, then turn his stare to their VOCALOIDs, evoking a rainbow of different responses from them. It’s so amazing how lifelike these androids could be sometimes. 

Yukio came in again this week, just for a quick fix, not quite cosmetic enough to be done at home but busywork for a mechanic, something like a joint lubrication or LED replacement… I didn’t write it down. He hid behind Imane when he noticed Rex staring at him, and I’m not sure if it was fear he felt or just the discomfort of being stared at, because Rex was still not exactly the easiest on the eyes yet. An unaccompanied Tonio sauntered in that day too, and the crisp, fresh press on his suit, the blinding polish on his horn, and the way he stiffened when his iridescent golden eyes met Rex’s brown ones told me that he probably had some variation of the same personality that many Tonio models had— Independent, Perfectionistic and/or Moody. Still, it was nice to see one. Engloids aren’t a common sight these days. A Miku just waved at Rex with a kind, yet vaguely uncomfortable smile on her face.  
A Kagamine model, I couldn’t tell if it was a Len or a Rin, was brought in later in the week, and I think they must’ve seen Rex staring at them from outside the glass door or something because I could feel the agitation and irritation radiating off of them as they shifted their weight and paced quietly in the lobby, their owner just oblivious. 

I had a great time trying to help the owner restrain them after they decided to try and hop over my desk to attack Rex, and send the both of them off to another mechanic, the nearest of which was 3 hours out from here.  
I’m not sure why owners choose such aggressive traits for their VOCALOIDS to have. Maybe it’s a learned behavior? Why would you want your VOCALOID to be able to kick your ass? 

Rex didn’t provide much conversation, but sometimes yes or no is all I need. I like to work in silence anyways. But...

I promised Rex I was going to fix him. I’m working on being a woman of my word so I’m doing everything in my power to do so. 

I guided him into the car two minutes after closing and took him to that one VOCALOID part shop that I keep forgetting the name of. The one that closes 30 minutes after I close?  
I could see the same pissed off yet genial smile I wore when customers came in so close to closing written all over the owner’s face. 

There were a million rows of cat ears, angel wings, devil horns and the like, far too many rows of kawaii desu crap than there were actual rows of components and practical items for your ‘loids. There were only about three rows of shelves with personality components on them, and of course it’s right next to the section of the store that was haphazardly hidden behind a threadbare beaded curtain, hiding densely packed shelves holding parts that were self heating, lubricating, vibrating, girthy, and squishy. Weirdos. 

I was just glad that none of the 3 VY2s employed there ushered Rex to go ham and pick out whatever parts he wanted. I could see them eyeing him and me as well while they stood near the corners of the store, replacing misplaced items and adjusting the sale signs when the fan in the shop would blow them out of place.  
The conversation telling Rex that I refuse to have a 6’5 BIG AL with rainbow cat ears and devil wings with a matching bell collar sitting in my shop probably wouldn’t be hard at all considering the fact that he’s only capable of answering yes or no, but still. I just watched from the sidelines as Rex browsed, calling him back over towards me whenever he wandered too close to the beaded curtains or towards the French maid costumes and cat ears.

Absent-Minded, Kind, and Friendly were the traits he chose, which was more like the personality of a golden retriever than a VOCALOID, but hey. They were in the store, and Rex chose them. 

The next day, I waited for a lull in customers so I could retreat into the Miku room to go ahead and install the damn things. My hands were shaking last night as I plugged Rex in in the space in my room I’d made for him while I anticipated this moment.

“Rex.” I call his name in warning— he seemed like he didn’t want me to turn him off for some reason. Every time I would move my hand to his power button, he would brush my hand away… odd. “Rex, you want me to fix you, right?”

He answers me with just a frown, and doesn’t look me in the eyes. 

“Rex…” I sat down across from the anti-static operating table he was sitting on. “I… I’m not going to buy those rabbit ears you kept looking at in the store. I will not.” 

“Yes.” He says.

“No.” I say, getting up again and snapping the charger to his skin. For a VOCALOID with so many damaged components, Rex sure loved to argue. This is the third time this week. “You’re not going to be a bunny, Rex. I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” Rex narrows his eyes at me, a mannerism he’d picked up while watching me stare down unruly customers and free-ranged ‘loids, and I just narrow mine back at him. 

“Rex, I’m going to turn you off now. I promise that I’ll turn you back on the moment I’m finished. We can talk about the bunny ears when you wake up.” I slowly move my hand to his power button, and I wait for him to brush my hand off again as I rest my finger over it. He doesn’t.

I press down on it, and move his arms out of the way and pull his sweater up (I bought another one from a clothing store yesterday) once he turns off. I wonder if that was just a normal playful (I guess) argument, or the beginnings of that power button related anxiety that many VOCALOIDs are afflicted with. In Rex’s case I’m not sure where he could’ve picked that up from.  
I’ve never just shut him down and left him or anything like that.

I snap on my anti static wristband before unscrewing his chest plate and being greeted with the final creek bug scrambling out and running away. I safely keep the screws in one of the cupcake wrappers I kept nearby for this exact purpose.  
The first attachment was Absentminded, which had a nice picture of a stock KAITO with a big thought bubble coming from him filled with static on it, an apt visual representation of the elevator music that’d be playing in Rex’s mind momentarily. Tight fit, but it gets attached pretty well. With all the elbow grease it took to get it on there, I don’t think I’ll be replacing that one any time soon. Rex’s choice, not mine. 

“mAst—-er-?” Rex groans and tries to sit up, letting out a loud two tone chime indicating that needs repairs. It’s almost like I had no idea… It’s a good sign though— in the early days I was begging to hear a chime, and now, I can’t get him to shut up. 

“Go back to sleep!” I yelp, pressing his power button again. I find my hands guiding his head and shoulders back down so he doesn’t bump his head on the rubber coated table. 

I hurry up with attaching Kind and Friendly, hoping he doesn’t wake up mid repair again. I’m not sure what waking up during an installation is doing to him, but it can’t be anything good. 

As I’m screwing his chest plate back on, I notice the spots on the Y-shaped scar he had on his abdomen where the paint had chipped off, and how that one curl of hair that fell onto his forehead drew attention to the tarnished gold stitches in his skin. I’ll do some detailing soon— it’s an unwritten rule that your VOCALOID should always look the best they can. 

I think I’ll do that myself, too. I shudder to think of what a detailer would do to my ‘loid if Rex woke up mid surgery, or how Rex would react to having someone other than me working on him. Or if he started chiming, or if they found out where I got him? They’d probably tell me he needed to be shut down and take the liberty of doing so for me. I don’t want anyone making that call on my behalf. 

I stop thinking and undo the look of disgust I have on my face, and take a sip of water to get that bitter taste out of the back of my throat. For a moment there, I had turned into my father— It doesn’t happen often, but I felt it that time. Bleurgh. 

I unplug him, and slowly guide his legs over the side of the table and sit him up so he can sit. I move his hands to his lap and when I guide my fingers over his right forearm I feel a noticeable bump. I bring it to my face— the slot Rex’s Master Verification Card was supposed to be in seemed to be filled with some sort of hot glue… why? If that’s the case how does he know I’m his master? Who did this to him? 

I’ll worry about that later. 

I put his hand back on his lap, doubts and mysteries stemming from that revelation still fresh in my mind, and pressed his power button. 

“Good afternoon, Rex.” I speak slow and clear to him, force of habit. 

“I wanna be a bunny, Master.” He doesn’t even greet me back, he just goes straight back to arguing. “Huh? Why are you smiling at me? We need to go back and buy that bunny set! You want me to be a bunny.”

“Good afternoon to you too, Rex.” I say. No more yes/no for me. There’s a long path ahead of us, full of convenience, conversation, and… wait, what? “No. I’m still not getting the rabbit costume, Rex. I don’t want you to be a rabbit.” 

Rex pouts and gives this sort of half growl sort of… VOCALOID noise, and folds his arms again. 

“Jeez, Rex. I don’t seem to remember you choosing stubborn when we went to the parts store.” I say, holding in my laughter— a result of my nerves dissipating and the sense of success coming over me once again. “Speaking of which, what personality components do you currently have installed?”

“You just put them in a moment ago,” he says. He unfolded his arms and rested them on the edge of the table then looked at me, a soft frown on his face. Finally, I could see some life and character behind those gold-brown eyes of his. “Did you already forget?” 

“No. I just want to make sure you’re able to read your components, okay?”

“Kind, uh... Friendly?” He looks at me for approval on the second one. I wonder if it’s the absentmindedness trait or if he’s genuinely having trouble reading his components.

“What else?” 

“Oh, uh, Absent minded!” He says. 

“That’s right, Rex.” It’s only now that I feel the ache in my cheeks and I realize I’ve been grinning like a madman since Rex started really speaking to me. “Good job.” 

Oh, I’m so glad he’s working. So glad, in fact, that I didn't notice the bell I’d bought for the front desk had been hit almost six times now.

“I have to get back to work.” I put the tools back, and lock the toolbox in case Rex decides he’s curious about its dangerous innards. “You’re welcome to join me, but don’t expect any outrageous fun.”

Despite the warning, Rex follows me back into the office, and pulls his chair closer to mine so that he could see outside of the window a little more. Standing there is a guy around my age and the Kagamine model who had tried to jump over my desk yesterday. It seemed to have lost a notable amount of energy, because they were just standing behind their master with these big, watery eyes. 

“...I would like to have this VOCALOID deactivated.” He says with a sigh, looking me in the eye. “I know I was kicked out earlier this week, but you’ve got to—“

“I don’t have to do anything for you.” The habitual response jumps out from my lips.

“I— you, I went to the other mechanic and he refused to do it. I had no choice but to come back to you.” He drums his fingers on the ledge in front of my desk, then takes the click pen I have up there for the customers and clicks it in an attempt to soothe his anxieties. “Please.” 

The Kagamine was shaking behind him, and looked as though they’d run away if they had enough battery life to do so. Aside from that brief show of aggression from earlier in the week, there seemed to be nothing wrong with them— no busted LEDs, dead eyes, or stiff joints— but yet they were due to be deactivated. I don’t want to do a deactivation, but the money it could bring in would be greatly appreciated.

“...Okay.” I say. Deactivation is a natural part of a VOCALOID’s lifespan. Even taking the utmost care of your android, keeping them away from excessive amounts of dust and water, replacing components, and giving them TLC isn’t enough to stave off deactivation forever. “I will do that for you. Bring them back tomorrow.”

Rex’s stare is cold on the back of my neck, and a deep, dark pit in my stomach forms. 

“Please… I don’t want any of the components or anything. Just take it off of my hands please.”

“We’re closing.” My voice firms. “Bring them back tomorrow, I’ll do it when we open.”

I fucking hate doing deactivations. The thought of deactivating a VOCALOID, much less a perfectly good one, brings burning tears to my eyes, and I feel my father hollering at my softness. Hell, if the bastard was still here, he’d be telling me to deactivate Rex too.  
I can’t even stand to look in the eyes of that VOCALOID who was due to be deactivated as it left, much less look back at Rex, who was burning holes into the back of my neck with his eyes. 

I sigh, and get up from my chair. 

“Master?” Rex called me once I got up, his voice soft. I don’t know which I feared more, the question he’d ask me, or the answer I would have to give. There’s no way Rex would be psyched to know that he’d found himself in the hands of a VOCALOID euthanizer, but after the conversation that just happened at the front desk, he has to know by now. I… just wish that this conversation wasn’t the first one he’d witness with his new personality installed, a conversation about a VOCALOID’s eventual death. 

“Let's get ready for bed.” I say, turning out the lights, and heading upstairs to my room, a lot quicker and more hurriedly than I’d want - the feeling of questions and thoughts that’d inevitably keep me awake at night chasing me up was too much to bear.


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEACTIVATION DAY!!! *dun dun dun* 😣

I would’ve stayed in bed longer, praying that the cocoon of pillows, blankets and duvets sheltering me from the deep cold in my room would swallow me up, so I could avoid the deactivation, Rex’s questions about the deactivation, and the daydrinking I’d also probably do later today, if I hadn’t heard that loud crash in the lobby. 

My mind was heavy with dreams of counting soft, fuzzy sheep when I sat up and slipped my cold feet into my slippers, but the sheep scattered and disappeared with another loud echoey crash.

“Damn it,” I say, under my breath.

I get Miss Sandman, the unicorn-vomit-pink crowbar my father bought me, from under my bed. Of course, after all that cursing I did to my father yesterday came back to bite me in the ass, there’s probably someone breaking in. Here I am, a gangly 5’9 18 year old girl, alone in a shop with lots of potential makeshift weapons and expensive equipment. I’m not sure where Rex is, he wasn’t chilling on my couch the way he usually did (he always wakes up before I do), and he didn’t bring his charger downstairs either. For all I know, someone could’ve taken him, or maybe he just wandered out and got lost somewhere, and I don’t even have him chipped so I can’t track him down. 

I tiptoe down the stairs, carefully holding Miss Sandman in a way that kept its flaky craft glitter off of my hands, trying not to hyperventilate, and willing my heart to not leap out of my throat. 

The wall is cool on my back as I peek around the corner into the lobby, holding the crowbar tight.

“You unhand me now!” The Kagamine shrieks. 

It’s the Kagamine from yesterday. Apparently that dude from before couldn’t stand another night with them, and he got them in here somehow, even though I’m 99% sure I locked the door.

“No! You attacked me first!” Rex shouts back. He had gotten ahold of one of their elbows and their fist, and luckily, they hadn’t started kicking or headbutting yet. 

My old, ugly grey sofa had had its legs kicked from under it, the matching ugly chair had been crushed, and the rack of VOCALOID fashion and component magazines I had spent an inordinate amount of time color coding and stacking had been completely overturned, issues strewn all over the place. 

The clang that the crowbar made upon hitting the floor was deafening in the tiny halfway space, and miraculously, none of the tiles on the floor had cracked with its weight.

“What the hell is going on here?” spilt out my mouth faster than I could think, and it makes Rex flinch in surprise.

The Kagamine took that split second flinch and used it to nimbly wriggle their way out of Rex’s grasp and out the door... or so they hoped. The door was locked, the way I remember it being last night. 

“How’d you get in here?” I approach them as carefully as I can, with both my hands visible just in case the smaller VOCALOID was under the impression that I had some sort of magical deactivation gun hidden behind my back. 

“She was outside.” Rex says, letting the Kagamine go, but staying on guard. “She was right in front of the door and it was cold out so I let her in.” 

That… made a lot of sense. The Kagamine was dressed in Rin’s default outfit, minus the bow. The lack of sleeves and the too-short-short-shorts would’ve done nothing for them in this cold weather we were having. I forgot just that quickly that Rex was a fully (or full-ish) functioning android, who was capable of a lot more than just yes and no. That’s what I get for leaving the keys in the hallway, just a few feet away from the front door, after all. I never did tell Rex that he shouldn’t just let random people into the shop, VOCALOID or otherwise, so I can’t really blame him for letting them in. At least he locked the door afterwards. 

On the other hand, I noticed that Rex used she/her pronouns for the Kagamine, but the android didn’t really look like a girl to me. Every time a new update to the Rin/Len body sculpt comes out, it’s almost like they intentionally make it so they look androgynous and nigh identical. VOCALOIDs aren’t anatomically correct unless their owner purchases parts that make them so, and their voices can sound extremely similar, so the only way you could really be sure if your Kagamine was a Len or a Rin would be talking to them for a little while, and asking them. Their boxes always say ‘Kagamine Rin/Len’, with both names printed even though there’s only ever one android in the box, and you can’t choose their gender.

“Okay…” I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

I was supposed to have the shop open today, but there’s no way I could let customers into the shop with it all turned up like this. It looked like the Tasmanian Devil came in here, hopped off of an entire case of redbull, and just went ham. It’s going to take a moment to fix everything, not to mention, I still will have to go out and buy new furniture. I hate spending money. 

Well… now that I think about it, maybe it’s better this way. The deactivation would put a damper over everything else I would be doing today, so it’s probably better so that I’ll be able to do my work in a more comfortable headspace tomorrow. The couch and chair have been in this shop since before LEON was even a twinkle in some computer nerd’s eye, and it also attracted dust and moths too, so maybe it’s better that I let it go. It’s probably a waste of space to have all of these outdated VOCALOID fashion magazines piling up too. The resurgence of the 2006/7 fashion dark age wouldn’t be here anytime soon, and hopefully by the time it does return, I won’t be here to witness it. 

I’m getting sidetracked. It’s better to just get the deactivation done instead of just mulling over it all day, after all. 

“Come with me.” I say. “Rex, stay here.”

“What? You really think that I’m going to come with you?” the Kagamine wore a confused expression on their face. “Hell no.”

“What’s your name?” I ask, in a feeble attempt to distract them away from busting out my window and torturing my wallet more. 

“What’s it to you?”

Rex was looking back and forth between us, me, to the Kagamine, like a devoted fan at a tennis match. It brought a smile to my face. 

“I’m leaving.” The Kagamine huffed and headed back towards the door, and I could sense from a mile away that their sudden calmness was just there to (poorly) mask their fear. 

“No! You can’t leave!” Rex stood up and frowned, going and taking a hold of their arm again.

“Let go of me, I’m leaving!” They say again, and they start fighting tooth and nail to get out of Rex’s grasp and probably not make it out of the locked door. FffThis is definitely how they broke the couch and crushed the chair and upturned the magazines, and I’m surprised that neither of them had sustained any damage in their struggle. 

“Cut that out!” I can’t get too close, or else the Kagamine will panic again and hurt Rex and/or themself. “Stop before y’all get hurt!” 

As soon as I say that, Rex trips on a 2013 issue of the VOCALOID fashion magazine, and falls over with the Kagamine under him. I flinch, but I didn’t hear any cracks. At least the lobby was carpeted. 

“I’m sorry, master!” Rex got up almost instantly, and let out a shriek/yelp because the Kagamine wasn’t moving. It must’ve bumped its power button during their fall. Hopefully this was just an issue with their power button and not a sign of major damage.

“It’s alright, Rex. Help me bring them to a room.” 

I turned the ‘CLOSED’ sign in the window today for the first time in almost 5 years. My dad would’ve kicked my ass if he knew I had the shop closed on a day it should be open. 

Rex had little problem carrying the Kagamine to the nearest unlocked “operation” room, which was to be expected. He was 6’5 and strong as heck, after all, and now that I think of it, he also could’ve broken one of the Kagamine’s arms if he wasn’t being careful and conscious of what he was doing.

I’m a few steps outside of the doorway when I hear the thud of Rex setting them on the operation table. 

“Rex, be careful!” I half-frown. He still had a few things to learn, but I already just can’t stay mad at him. 

The usual procedures go on— I start up my computer and I hook the Kagamine up to the wall (they fought pretty well, especially considering that they only had 20% battery left) and Rex is there, sitting and watching me. 

“I don’t know if this is something you wanna see, Rex.” I say, and he doesn’t really respond. 

A moment passes as I test to see if he’ll leave of his own volition, but he just stays put in the chair, waiting patiently for me to continue. I take off their shirt and they’re flat chested, which tells me absolutely nothing about what gender this VOCALOID was, and I go through the motions of unscrewing their chestplate (the screws were stripped to shit like the dude was messing with their components too often) and opening them up. 

Their voicebank looked to be haphazardly thrown into their body as though their speaking ability was just an afterthought. Readjusting it helped, though it was still wiggly like he used to take the component out and put it back in far too often. As for personality components… they had none. A normal VOCALOID (one that hasn’t been hanging out in a creek) is able to develop a personality of their own through a complex system of algorithms, RNG, and careful learning from their masters, so I shudder to think about what that dude was doing to them to make them lash out so often. 

I look back at Rex, and he’s still looking at me, only now, he looks genuinely worried about the android who was just viciously attacking him less than 15 minutes ago.

Other than the wobbly voicebank, their battery was in good shape, their power button was just out of alignment (that’s why they had shut down earlier. Easy fix thankfully). 

The VOCALOID deactivation wizard on my computer opens, and I’m given an ample amount of time to think about how their last moments were coming, and they didn’t have a chance to bid anyone farewell. Not that they really had anyone to say goodbye to to my knowledge, though. As far as I know, they despised their master, and they’d only just met Rex and I, so I doubt they’d care to say bye to us anyways.

I erase the previous owner’s credentials from them, and I’m able to hover my mouse over the big red ‘DEACTIVATE’ button… but my finger just won’t click it.

Rex is still here… should he really be watching another ‘loid die? I don’t even know if he knows what deactivation is.

The Kagamine was so interesting, and so full of personality— even if that personality was a little rough on the edges, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, other than a few minor fixes. 

As a matter of fact, their old jackass master just abandoned them here at my doorstep (thank goodness Rex saw them before their battery froze) so I bet he didn’t really care if they were deactivated or not. From the way the Kagamine acted I could tell that their master was far from good. I close out of the window, replace the screws in their chestplate with new ones, and unplug them from the wall. 

“Master? You aren’t going to deactivate her?” Rex was genuinely confused, which was a welcome change from the blatant discomfort he had been trying to hide earlier.

“Nah.” I say, pressing and holding their power button again. “They’re gonna get a second chance, just like you.”


	7. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An odd time and an odd alliance for now
> 
> Part 1 of 2 :) I had a lot of fun writing this chapter, and I’m currently having fun writing the next one too x

My beeping woke me up out of my sleep, telling me that not only was my battery down to 25%, but I was on this entire time, just sitting with my back against the wall with my eyes closed. I lazily slap my hand against the wall, searching for the outlet, only to find that it’s bare, then I look under the soft, yellow sun pillow I always sat on, to find that the charger wasn’t there, either. I was hoping that she stopped unplugging me like she said she would yesterday (and the day before), but the new VOCALOID still unplugged me and took my charger downstairs with her. 

There’s literally a bazillion chargers downstairs already, like 6 in every room and 5 extras for each one, so I don’t understand why she insists on taking mine, the only one that’s upstairs, and leaving me to wake up with a nearly empty battery. I haven’t been able to follow my usual routine of waiting for Master to wake up and making sure she’s still breathing while she’s face down in her pillows because of her.   
I tiptoe-marched downstairs (quietly, so that I don’t accidentally scare Master like I did a few days ago) to find her, because I’ve had enough of her doing this! She always plugged herself into the outlet in the lobby closest to the door, even though the doors were always locked at night. I don’t get why she doesn’t just run away from here during the day, when the door’s unlocked, since she didn't seem to like me or Master very much. Plus, she seemed like a pretty new VOCALOID model, so I bet she has solar panels so she can charge outside.

“Quit unplugging me!” I whisper-shout at her, after gently shaking her awake. “You could at least plug me back up with another charger. I’ve woken up with an empty battery every day since you’ve been here!” 

“Whatever.” She says, folding her arms. 

It takes me exactly 5 seconds to get one of the chargers out of the blue room in the hallway, and when I come back I unplug the new VOCALOID to get my charger back. I know Master said that all the chargers work fine, and I didn’t need my own personal charger… but that one was still mine! Master always plugged me up with that one.

“Hey! Why’d you do that!?” She gasped and looked at me with her eyes all wide like I’d insulted her or something. 

“Use this one and quit unplugging me!” I gave her the other charger, which had been decorated with a tiny blue dot and a little blue label that said ‘KAITO’ on it. 

“Ugh, fine.” she rolled her eyes as she always did, only that this time she didn’t snatch the charger out of my hand. 

It’s only around 3-ish A.M. right now, and Master wouldn’t be up for at least another 7 hours, and I don’t want to accidentally wake her up by going back upstairs… so I plug my charger into the wall in the lobby too, and snap the magnetic part to my skin. I’ve been down here earlier than this, and every time I felt weird being here at such an early hour for some reason. Maybe it’s because Master’s not with me, or maybe it’s because it’s so cold and quiet here. I don’t know, but it feels familiar to me somehow— familiar in a bad way, even though it’s something that I’m experiencing for the first time, if that makes any sense. It’s so quiet down here because even the birds and the traffic are sleeping right now. And really, I should be sleeping right now, too. I have my charger, and I’m plugged in, and it’s quiet and safe down here, but I just can’t sleep, and I’m not sure why. 

Without the couch and the chair and all the magazines, the lobby was wayyy more spacious than I imagined... and a lot more dirty too. Well, it’s only semi dirty now. I helped Master get rid of the broken furniture and sort the magazines and stuff yesterday. There were dust bunnies the size of golf balls hiding under the magazine racks (I helped master get rid of them), and the tiles beneath the couch and chair were six shades lighter than the rest of the room. There were little stains and random screws and LED bulbs and loose change and broken keychains on the floor wherever we couldn’t see them. Would you believe that that grey rug under the coffee table in here used to be white? And that it had stripes too? Master insisted on throwing it away.   
Also, I saw five of these little creatures called ‘spiders’ and they’d make Master scream every time she saw them even though they’re so small. Even though they were only the size of my fingertips, I had to put them outside.

I feel bad for Master, and guilty about what I did. We broke the couch and the chairs and the table and we had to throw away the rug, and now there was nothing in the lobby except for five magazines and the little plastic plant I had in my hand. Where will the customers and their VOCALOIDs sit when they come in? Master said that they won’t sit on the floor, and I know from watching Master that humans can’t stand for very long because it makes their feet hurt. 

“Would you quit making all that noise?” the VOCALOID whined, and turned to look at me. She was lying on her side with her knees pulled up to her chest, (Master always turned the heat off when she was asleep, so it was barely warmer than it was outside now) with her back facing me, so I thought she’d been sleeping this entire time. I’d been making a quiet whirring noise since I started thinking, and Master said she was going to fix it once she got the time to. 

“My name is Rex.” I say. We have the same master, and we are both VOCALOIDs, so that must mean we’re a family, I think. Master, me, and the new VOCALOID. Master rarely used her TV but when she did, there were always commercials on. I forgot what it was selling, but one’s feel-good message was that a family could be made up of a master and their VOCALOIDs. “Do you have a name?”

“No.” They say.   
Maybe she doesn’t have a name, or maybe she’s just shy. I think she’s shy.

“Huh? You don’t have a name?”

“I don’t have a name.” 

“Can I name you?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Okay, Good.” I smile at her. “I’m Re—“

“No! My name’s not ‘Good’. I just… don’t have a name.” She curled up a little tighter at that, so I let the topic go.   
I return to thinking about things, staring at my toes and fidgeting with the hem of my sweater. The room was so empty and the floor was so grey and bad looking, and the sun hasn’t come up enough to peek through the windows yet so it’s only the LEDs in our eyes and on our nails dimly lighting the room right now.

Master keeps watching these shows where 2 VOCALOIDs (and a group of people) go into a house and pick out new furniture and rugs and stuff and make the house look good. I bet if Tora and Diva were here, they’d probably choose a cool, colorful rug to replace the old one, and maybe an oddly shaped chair and couch set and some fluffy pillows to match. And a lamp in the corner. Or maybe, they’d make the lobby all cute, so it matched the way Master decorated her room— make it all pink with stuffed animals and faux fur and all sorts of other cute things like that... and add a real plant and a scented candle (like they did on every episode as the finishing touch), too. It’ll really put the room together, and brighten up the lobby too, so that it’s not so sad in here, and Master will be crying tears of joy just like the people on the show. 

“I have an idea.” I blurt out, and I can’t help the grin that’s stretching on my face. “We should go out and buy some furniture for Master!” 

“I-- uh…” She says, craning her neck to look at me with her back still turned to me. “Huh? Are you serious?”

“Yeah! We broke all of the furniture, and the customers have no place to sit ‘cause there’s no chairs for them. We can go to the store and buy some furniture for her!” 

The VOCALOID didn’t seem to have any complaints about my plan so far, so it looks like we’re going on an adventure today! I haven’t been outside since Master took me to the VOCALOID store, (I’ve asked her why, and she keeps avoiding the question. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen Master leave the store in a while, either) and I’ve been dying to go for a little bit for a while. I don’t think Master would mind us borrowing her car and her wallet (as long as we don’t break anything) so we can use that to go out to the furniture store I found on my GPS, then come back with a couch and chair that matched the decorations Master had in her room. 

“...but it’s cold outside.” She adds, and she’s right. It’s already October 20th now. It snowed a centimeter last week, but the snow melted. But the hot days that were here at the beginning of the month were gone too. 

“Hm…” I know that none of my pants will fit her, because she’s so scrawny and short, so I get up and quietly unlock the latch on the little door to Master’s desk. She kept one of my sweaters in here for some reason, but I’m going to give it to the new VOCALOID, so she doesn’t get too cold. “Here, wear this.” 

It’s a soft fleece lined hoodie with ‘Patagonia’ printed on the front and a tiny hole in one of the shoulders, in a gray that was the same color as the secret dustbunnies that had been in here less than two days ago. It was one of my favorites to wear, even though Master wore it more often than I did. It won’t make up for the fact that she’s wearing shorts, but the sweater itself was super warm. “I don’t think Master’s pants will fit you, so maybe we can go out and buy some clothes, too.”

She wasn’t facing me anymore, but I could see how her LEDs brightened in interest up as soon as I mentioned buying new clothes.   
“Alright.” She decides, once she’s put my hoodie on and unplugged herself from the wall. “I’m in.”  
When she stood up, my hoodie covered her hands and her shorts, which made her look like she had no pants on, since her shorts were so short too. 

“Master’s purse is upstairs, on the purple thing near her bed.” I tell her, deciding now was the perfect moment to lower my voice even more. “Do you think you can get it? The keys and the wallet are in there, so we can’t leave without it.” 

She huffed, and seemed exactly like she was going to say no, but she agreed to go up there and retrieve the secret ingredient we needed to put this plan in motion. She was much smaller and nimbler than I was, plus if she can come upstairs and unplug me without me or master noticing, this should be a piece of cake for her.

Walking through the narrow hallway was easy (except for the fact that I almost tripped over Master’s toolbox that was in the middle of the floor again), but the hard part was going to be walking up the stairs and past Master’s bed without waking her up.   
At 4:46, there was absolutely no light in the back room where the stairs were (except for the little cracks where the blinds didn’t fully cover the windows), so heading up the spiral staircase proved to be a bit of a challenge for the new VOCALOID. She had to walk as quietly as possible, and slowly too (because her joints were a little loud, like mine), and more importantly NOT fall, which she did twice even though I told her not to. 

“The fuck do you mean ‘don’t fall!’!?” She whisper-yelled. “These stairs are slippery as hell!”

“Shhhh!” I hiss, and I get on the stairs too, keeping 2 steps of space between us. “Just don’t fall. I’ll catch you.”

She fell three times in total. The first time she caught herself on the railing, and she tried to do the same the other two times she fell, but the sleeves of my sweater made her grip slippery so she ended up falling backwards, head into my chest. She’s a little heavier than I thought. But, if she fell on the stairs, Master would hear the noise, and also would have to fix her, which would totally ruin the surprise, and the new VOCALOID would probably hate me for not catching her too.

She took forever getting the bag from upstairs, and I swear I heard Master stop snoring a few times. I stood on the stairs for nearly two hours, but when I checked the time, it was just 4:53. Did she fall asleep up there on accident? Master’s bed really does look comfy, with all the pillows and plush animals and blankets...

“It’s this bag, right?” She came back on the stairs with the purse, which was pink and fuzzy, just like the sheep and cats on Master’s bed.

“Yeah.” I look in, because you can never be too sure, and yeah. That’s the bag, alright. Everything is in there, most importantly her pink wallet, and the keys to the car with that yellow duck keychain (it’s so squishable!!!) on it. There’s also a tiny mirror, a little tube that says ‘Jergens’, a papery thing that says ‘Trident’, a Pokemon card, and 12 tubes of human lip gloss. 

Going downstairs was a lot easier than going upstairs, especially considering that I had only gone up about 5 steps. 

“aaAH!” The new VOCALOID would’ve been yelling, if she hadn’t turned her voice volume down earlier. She nearly tripped and fell off the third step, but I was able to catch her in time and safely lower her to the floor. “...thanks.” 

Quietly, we shuffled to the door, and I opened it a millimeter at a time so it didn’t freak so loudly, and then, we were outside. I locked the door to the shop, I know Master had a spare key in there somewhere. 

Being outside this early felt even weirder, and even more badly familiar than sitting in the empty lobby did. The air was cool, but it felt much colder than it actually was because the nonstop rain only let up about an hour ago. It’s probably going to start raining again soon, so we’d better get going while we can. My systems won’t let me drive during the first 20 minutes of rain, as a safety precaution. 

I get into the driver's seat of Master’s car, and the new VOCALOID is feeling not-shy enough to sit next to me in the passenger seat, clicking her seatbelt on. The key went in the ignition easily, and the engine came on with little effort. The parking lot was small, but very empty, so I reversed out of the spot, and got on one of the sidestreets, driving slowly.

“Okay, where’re we going first?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m loving this fic a lot more than I expected tbh it really do be giving me lots of dopamine tho
> 
> I’m going to do some editing of the chapters before this one, so everything flows a little better and chapter 1 isn’t a mile long, you know?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is part 1 😉
> 
> TW: suicidal thoughts (?) they aren’t graphic IMO but just thought I’d tag anyway lol

“This loneliness is killing me  (and I)  I must confess, I still believe!  (still believe!) ” 

This dude is fucking crazy. 

This whole entire experience is fucking crazy. 

Only a few days ago, I was recounting the few memories I had (they were shit memories… but they were the only things I could use to take my mind off of my impending doom for a moment), waiting for the butcher to take me to the back room and fry my internal circuits in deactivation, and white-knuckle clinging to the pain my rapidly fading sensors would feel as I was chopped up and sold for parts. 

I’ve spent so many hours of my life contemplating what deactivation would feel like. What my final thoughts would be. If deactivation was as gruesome as Sunny and Clementine and Master always said, or if it was something that crept up on you, silent and peaceful like in the commercials I got passing glimpses of. 

Maybe it’d be both. 

I was supposed to find out.

I was supposed to be lost by now, drowning deep under a rusted sea of junk cars, scrap metal, and busted refrigerators, somewhere in the very back of the city junkyard.

Whenever I fucked up (no matter how small my mistakes were) Master would always threaten me with a trip to Chopyard. 

I fucked up for the last time.   
He dropped me at the doorstep.

I didn’t die.

Here I am, dwelling in the narrow space between “living on borrowed time” and “I ‘died’, but I was reborn”, sitting in the passenger seat of a stolen(?) mid sized sedan speeding and careening through the uncharacteristically empty city streets, going on a (unsupervised!) shopping spree while I listen to one of the, like, 20 remaining Big Als, sing a fucking pop song.

“Give me a Siiiii~~iign!” Rex belts, with a vibrato so loud and intense I swear I felt the car shake, effortlessly yanking me out of my dangerously spiraling thoughts. “Hit me baby one more time!” 

If this whole experience was nothing but a dream from my dying mind, I’d be none the wiser. But hearing Rex sing along to this Britney Spears song almost makes me _want_ to be in the junkyard right about now.

On a side note, it’s funny that the Britney Spears CD was already in the player when we got in here, even though all the other discs scattered around The Butcher’s car were all Bauhaus, Cannibal Corpse, and Bring Me the Horizon (along with a fossil of a cassette tape of “Spanish for Kids” in the glovebox for some reason). Even though she had so much cutesy crap in her room, I always assumed that someone called Butcher would be listening to Slayer and Cannibal Corpse. You know, scary and violent music, for someone who scarily and violently deactivates VOCALOIDs, like my siblings and Master said. They’ve all been full of shit since I’ve known them… but that’s one of the only things they say that I kind of believe. I’ve seen how other VOCALOIDs act around the Chopyard. 

But… I’ve also heard their rumors about the “creepy brain-dead” VOCALOID she had too, and Rex might not be stunning right now and he’s not necessarily the brightest crayon in the box, but calling him those things is blatantly untrue. 

The Butcher said she was going to give me a second chance and all that feelgood crap, but there’s still time for her to change her mind, if you catch what I’m saying. I don’t get why Rex doesn’t feel the same. How can he be so comfortable knowing that his master has the tools to deactivate him at any time!?   
I can tell that one of his personality parts is Absentminded, but come on.  
I mean, your master’s nickname is literally ‘Butcher’!! Hello!?

We’ve been on the road for about an hour or two now… I can’t check my clock, so I can only guess based on how much of the sun is showing. At the very least, Master could’ve reenabled my peripherals before he threw me out of the car in front of the shop, but even that was too much to ask of him apparently. I’m surprised that The Butcher didn’t notice that my peripherals were turned off when Rex ambushed me and turned me off… (and she expects to be paid…?) so, no clock, no news, no GPS or compass, radio, calculator, phone, camera, solitaire, nothing. Just me, my vision, and my thoughts.

All I know in terms of time is that we pulled into the thrift store earlier, but it was still “closed” even though I could see the employees staring directly at us.  
So, we got back in the car and drove around, waiting for the employees to drink their coffee and summon their will to live just enough to open the store. I know how it is.

Even though Master lives in an expensive high-rise apartment building right in the middle of the city, I haven’t seen as much of the city in all my 4 years living with him as I have seen in the hour or so I’ve been hauled around in this car with Rex. I caught glimpses out of the windows whenever Master forgot to power me off, but peeking out through the blinds, I could never really see much aside from the inside lights and the loud cars below. It’s amazing how tall the buildings are when you’re on the outside looking up. They really do look like they’re scraping the bottoms of the heavy rain clouds in the sky. Those clouds were dyed silver and gold, because the sunrise is in a few minutes, and... I’ve never had the chance to just sit and watch the sunrise without sacrificing my attention to do chores or clean. 

“Do you just wanna stay in the car, or are you gonna come in with me?” Rex asks, and I don’t really like that look of concern he has on his face. How long had he been standing there, looking at me? 

I hadn’t noticed that Britney Spears’s voice had stopped, nor that Rex had already pulled into the parking lot at the thrift store we’d been circling and driving around for the past two hours. I wiped my eyes with the sleeves of the fleece hoodie I was wearing, and… I wasn’t crying. Why was he so concerned about me anyways?

I turn away so I don’t have to look at him much longer, and get out on my side, careful to not knock out any of The Butcher’s precious Slayer CDs from the door’s compartments. 

We’re the first two customers of the day apparently, and we must be extra early, since there weren’t even any senior citizens in the store at the moment either, who always seemed to get their shopping done before everyone else. The employees were barely awake, so the only greetings we got upon walking into the store were from the VY1 who worked there, and the overwhelming scent of off-brand Tide Pods (which smelled like they were 90% fragrance, 10% detergent). 

I can feel my autopilot wanting to take over as I walk to the VOCALOID women's section of the store and force myself to fixate on the racks and racks of dresses and crop tops and shorts they had in stock over there. Someone’s well-loved android must’ve gone through a major style change or something, because there were enough full outfits over here to dress an army of Hatsune Mikus and Kagamine Rins twice over. There was a poofy pink dress that kept catching my eye, and the giant pink bow headset, stockings, and mary-jane shoes that made it a full outfit. There’s no one in this store other than me, Rex, and the people and VOCALOIDs who work here, but I can’t help but look over my shoulder every few seconds.

I don’t know who I’m looking for anyways. 

Master and my siblings wouldn’t be caught dead in a thrift store (even though secondhand VOCALOID accessories and clothes were rarely damaged. We don’t grow or play in the mud or anything), I can see Rex from a mile away because he’s so frickin’ tall, and I wasn’t misbehaving, so I had nothing to worry about…  
right? So why do I feel so hot? Like everyone is staring holes in me and my coolant’s been replaced with lava.

I hold the pink headset in my hands, and the bow on top of it is soft and edged with lace, and… no matter how hard I try, I just can’t bring myself to like it. I know I should like it at least a little bit, but… I just can’t. I put it down on the shelf on top of the racks, and when I reach out to try and convince myself that I can stand the pink dress the bow was supposed to come with, the back of my hand brushed against another synthetic hand, smooth, soft and dainty, pink LEDs and nail polish adorning her fingertips. I yank my hand back and let out a shriek that was loud enough to wake up the employees and startle myself.   
The Rin that I had accidentally touched looked at me with wide eyes and a slightly furrowed brow. Thankfully, this one wasn’t any of the Rins that I knew, though.

“Um, s-sorry!”  
I just go. I start walking to whatever section of the store was furthest away from that Rin and the dresses so that hopefully, I won’t have to experience that again. 

“I--”

I shriek again, but quieter this time. So much for never experiencing that again, I guess.

It was Rex, who managed to sneak up on me somehow. He’s got on a plush white bunny ear headband, which definitely came off of the ‘Happy Halloween!’ seasonal rack at the front of the store. I saw him eyeing it through the window while we waited.  
“...I heard you scream. You okay?” He asks me, and his voice is all soft and shit.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Mmhmm.” I say, feeling the back of my neck. 

“You’re a boy?” Rex genuinely sounded shocked, but in a more pleasant and friendly way than the Rin I had bumped into a moment ago. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“Umm…” I hadn’t noticed that my fleeing from the situation had led me all the way to the other side of the store, where the male VOCALOID section was. 

“Mmm, no.” I mumble under my breath. I don’t think Rex heard, but I don’t repeat myself. 

In my subconscious I had been avoiding this part of the store out of habit, even though it was the one place in the store I wanted to go to first. Had I not gotten spooked and ran, I’d probably be looking at the dusty antique rugs and ‘Foxy Grandpa’ hats in the miscellaneous section next to the female VOCALOID section. 

There weren’t as many full outfits over here compared to the other section, but I liked a lot more of the options over here (and I didn’t have to force myself either).   
There were regular headsets here, ones that had no frills or giant bows on top or anything like that— mostly just plain bands with simple designs (well most had simple designs. I found another pair of butterfly headsets over here just like the ones in the fem section). There were also a few sets of headsets that looked like human ears, so a VOCALOID could look more humanlike.  
But, I just take a regular white pair, a “Len” pair, plugs still intact, the exact same as mine but without the stupid bow, and I put it in the cart. 

That’s my first step. 

Towards what exactly I’m not entirely sure yet. I’m just going to try not to think about Master, because he doesn’t want me anymore, and try to enjoy this little outing I’m on, I guess.

We haven’t been in here for more than 30 minutes, but I’m feeling stirred and I’m just ready to get going now. I hope we don’t have to return to this store anytime soon (and if I do, I’ll run away, or wear a bag over my head). I just blindly throw in wardrobe essentials that’ll (1. Fit me at least a little bit, and (2. Help my components stay within the optimal temperature range. 

I don’t think he did it on purpose, but Rex decided to check out in the lane the VY1 who’d stared at me when I screamed earlier. She’s in a nice custom shell— taller than I am, round and kind eyed, full lipped, with a nose that was so obviously and so lovingly made just a little crooked to give off an air of imperfection. I bet she actually belonged to someone and wasn’t just another piece of store merchandise like most employed VOCALOIDs were. Probably a reincarnation of the young adult daughter of a grieving parent, or maybe a pet/experiment/passion project coming from one of the many college campuses around here.  
“Hanako” was the name printed on the receipt when we left, even though her name tag said ‘Aoi’.

I put the bag in the back seat of the car and wondered how the hell we were going to fit a couch and chair and all that other stuff Rex had put on our shopping list as he got onto the freeway.


End file.
